Chapter 3
Jude
I forced myself back into performer mode, terrorizing a bachelorette party and then a family with kids who were definitely too young to be in the scare zone, but whatever, not my problem.
My problems were more important anyway. I could still feel the phantom weight of Ash on top of me, could still feel the heat of his skin despite all that fabric and leather. It was short-circuiting my mind and dredging through memories better left forgotten.
I hated it. Hated that he’d gotten under my skin like this, hated that every night was becoming a competition I couldn’t win because winning would mean admitting there was something to compete for.
I hadn’t spiraled like this in years. Not since Dylan.
His face surfaced unbidden in my mind. He’d been a college linebacker with a future everyone could see coming except me, and we’d been polar opposites, but something had clicked anyway. He’d liked my darkness until he didn’t, liked how I kept things compartmentalized until I wouldn’t give him more.
“You don’t let anyone in,” he’d said the night he left. “Not really. You’re so busy controlling everything, you don’t even notice when people stop trying.”
He’d sounded so much like my mom. She’d said something similar after Dad had left and I’d locked myself in my room for three days straight.
Maybe they were both right.
Dylan had wanted promises I couldn’t make, futures I wouldn’t plan. He’d wanted me soft when I’d spent my whole life learning that soft meant broken. That giving someone access meant watching them leave with the crushed pieces of you still stuck to their shoes.
It was better to keep everyone at arm’s length. Better to make it a performance.
Except Ash wasn’t playing by those rules. He’d looked at me tonight with that challenge written all over his face, then melted under my hands like he’d been waiting for it. Like he wanted me to break him.
So fucking dangerous.
My thoughts shattered when a guy in a Ridgeway Park hoodie dared to try to jump-scare me. I got the upper hand and snarled, dropping into a slide that had his girlfriend shriek loud enough to make my ears ring. Good. Pain helped. It reminded me where I was and what mattered.
The rest of the night blurred together in a string of jump scares and screaming tourists. I went through the motions on autopilot, but some parts of me were always tracking Ash’s location, listening for his voice; waiting for the next time we’d collide.
We still had three more scheduled fight sequences, and I was determined not to let him get the drop on me again.
***
By the time the park’s closing announcement echoed through the speakers at two a.m., my entire body was strung tight. I needed to get out of my costume, wash off the makeup, and go home before I did something stupid.
I wanted to smash Ash in his smug mouth.
During the midnight show, he pinned me against the chain-link fence that separated the scare zone from the employee pathways, and his hand slipped lower than it should have.
He’d grabbed my ass cheek so hard I’d squeaked.
With anyone else, I would have written it off as a heat-of-the-moment slip of the hand.
These things happened when you were grappling and trying to make the show look good.
But Ash had flashed that shirt-stirring grin that told me everything I needed to know. He’d done it on purpose.
So during the one a.m. reset, I returned the favor by tackling him into the decorative hay bales and staying on top of him for a full ten seconds longer than choreography required. I pinned him down until his breathing changed and his hips shifted up in a way that definitely wasn’t rehearsed.
It should have been my win, but I’d scrambled off him so fast that he chuckled.
He was becoming a professional problem.
I headed for the employee changing rooms through the back tunnels, peeling off my tactical vest as I walked. My radio crackled with other performers signing off, the usual end-of-night chatter about who was hitting the diner and who had to open tomorrow.
“Solid show tonight, man.” Jonas’s voice came from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder, seeing him step down off his stilts. He was lanky and impossibly tall even without them, and the high crown of his scarecrow hat almost brushed the ceiling. “That scaffolding sequence was insane.”
“Yeah, well.” I didn’t finish the thought. I didn’t know how to explain that the improvisation was becoming a problem.
“You two have crazy chemistry,” Riley chimed in.
She was the longest-serving member of the crew and my favorite.
She may have dressed like a manic doll and skated around with a baseball bat, but she was smart.
Real, academically smart; not just streetwise and cocky.
Half the reason she wore so much face paint and crazy wigs was so she wouldn’t be recognized.
“The guests are eating it up,” she said.
They were. I’d seen the posts earlier during my break, scrolling through Instagram while I tried to pretend my hands weren’t still shaking from the first fight sequence.
@screamqueen87 OMG the tension between the Hunters tonight was UNREAL. Are they acting or is this thing???
@nightmarefuel99 I ship them so hard. #TheHunters #JudexAsh #Halloween2024
@darkromancereader excuse me that pin against the fence was NOT in the script last week. I need them to fight like that every night for the rest of my life. For science, obs
The comments went on like that. Hundreds of them.
It wasn’t unusual for my tag to trend around this time of year.
The park’s social media team was amazing, and there were always professional photographers and videographers floating through the scare zones, looking for the next viral video.
Consumers loved the dark, damaged but dangerous boy look, and after two years of this, we Hunters had gotten our vibe down to a fine art.
But with Ash involved, people were seeing something that didn’t exist. Or at least it was something I didn’t want them to see because I barely wanted to acknowledge it myself.
I ignored all the comments and put my phone away.
The changing room was blessedly empty when I arrived.
Most performers cleared out fast after the park closed, eager to get home or hit the bars.
I preferred the quiet aftermath, the comedown period where I could strip off the persona piece by piece until I remembered how to be a person who didn’t spend eight hours a night pretending to hunt someone through artificial fog.
I dumped my vest and holsters in my locker, then started on the buckled straps I’d spent hours customizing. My hands were still shaking slightly. Adrenaline, caffeine withdrawal, or probably a mixture of both. Or something else I refused to examine.
The door banged open behind me.
I didn’t turn around. I knew who it was by the way the boots hit the tile, by the specific rhythm of movement I’d learned to track across a crowded scare zone.
I kept working on my buckles, jaw tight.
“We need to talk about tonight.” Ash’s voice cut through the silence. No preamble, no greeting. Not that I wanted any of that from him, anyway.
“Do we?” I still didn’t turn around, even though every muscle in my body was aware of his location, of the distance between us, of how easy it would be to close that gap.
“That thing you did. When you had me pinned.” His voice was rougher than usual. “Your hand on my throat.”
My hands stilled on a buckle. “What about it?”
“You know exactly what about.” He was moving closer. “You pressed down. Way harder than the choreography calls for.” Was that really his excuse for letting out that needy little sound?
“Maybe you imagined it.”
“I didn’t imagine shit.” The edge in his voice was sharp now. Anger, maybe. Or something else.
“Yeah? Well, I sure as hell didn’t imagine you grabbing my ass.”
I finally turned, leaning back against my locker with my arms crossed. He was still fully costumed, makeup streaked but not removed, looking like he’d walked straight off the scare zone without bothering to decompress. He looked furious, and I felt an answering heat rise in my chest.
“Fine,” he said. “I grabbed your ass. You want an apology?”
“I want you to admit you’re doing it on purpose.”
“Doing what?”
“This.” I gestured between us, aggressive and sharp. “Whatever the fuck this is. The touching, the improvising, the way you look at me like you want to either fight me or—” I cut himself off, jaw clenching.
He stared at me for a long moment, and I could see him weighing options, deciding how honest he wanted to be. Then he shook his head and turned away.
“Forget it. Just stay on script tomorrow.”
What the fuck? He was the one going off script. He was the one being unprofessional. So he had no right to speak to me like that.
“You started it.” I pushed off my locker, stepping after him.
Anger was building inside of me, welling in the back of my throat and turning my voice high.
“I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re playing at, but you only have yourself to blame, and it needs to stop.
This isn’t how you prove yourself worthy of being here. ”
“I’m not trying to prove anything.” He turned back, and his face was unreadable under the smeared makeup. “I’m just doing my job.”
“Bullshit. You’re competing with me.”
“So what if I am?” He stepped closer, and there was something dangerous in the way he moved, something that made my breath catch. “You’ve been the star of this show for three years. Maybe it’s time someone pushed back.”
We were too close now, close enough that I could see the uneven edges where his makeup was flaking off, could count the creases around his eyes when he glared at me. The changing room was dead silent except for our breathing and the distant hum of industrial ventilation.
I should step back. I should shut this down before it became something neither of us could walk away from. Instead, I held my ground and met his stare head-on.
“You think you can take my spot?” I asked, and my voice came out lower than I intended and punctuated by a snide laugh. “You think you’re good enough?”
His jaw tightened. “I know I am.”
“Then prove it.” I smiled, sharp and mean. “Tomorrow night. Let’s see who the crowd really favors.”
It was a stupid challenge, the kind of thing that would make our already intense performances even more chaotic, and there was no way to properly track the audience’s reaction.
But I needed to lie down a challenge, needed to turn this into something I understood.
Competition that was defined by rules and had a clear winner and loser.
Not whatever else this was threatening to become.
His eyes lit up like I’d just offered him exactly what he wanted, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I’d just made everything infinitely worse.
Or better.
I really couldn’t tell anymore.
“Deal,” he said, and his smile matched mine for sharpness. “Hope you’re ready to lose, old man.”
He said it as if two years meant something. Fucking kids these days.
Then he left, the door swinging shut behind him, and I was alone in the changing room with my racing heart and the certainty that I’d just started something I didn’t know how to finish.
When I looked down at my hands, I found they were still shaking.
Tomorrow night was going to be a disaster.